


Angels All Over

by SinnamonSpider



Series: Stereo Love: Excerpts [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Biblical References, Dreams, God Ships It, Implied Lucifer/Michael (Supernatural), M/M, Non-Explicit, Sassy Dean, Shared Heavens, Sibling Incest, Song Lyrics, Soulmates, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 04:49:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11268267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinnamonSpider/pseuds/SinnamonSpider
Summary: Michael tries to win Dean over by tempting him with the ultimate prize: Sam.





	Angels All Over

**Author's Note:**

> This idea climbed in my head and burrowed in my brain like a parasite until I did something about it. Consequently, the bulk of this was written on my freakin' phone, back and forth on the train to work. Ridiculous. 
> 
> Timeline-wise, this is post "Dark Side of the Moon" but before they dig up Adam in "Point of No Return". Somewhere in there. Also, I'm playing fast and loose with the Bible here, forgive me. 
> 
> Title and lyrics from "Homesick" by Dua Lipa.
> 
> Standard disclaimers apply. Feedback is always the highlight of my day.

_When I’m walking on water_   
_All my dreams have come true_   
_Still nothing means nothing  
Without you_

When Dean closed his eyes, he was lying in a double bed in a particularly shitty motel room in Benton, Illinois, Sam’s soft, even breathing lulling him to sleep. 

When he opens his eyes, he's sitting in a low Muskoka chair at the end of a dock, looking out over a crystalline lake. 

“Dean.”

The voice is soft, low. He doesn't recognize it, and yet he feels that he's heard it all his life. It hits something low in his stomach, thrilling and terrifying all at once. His hands start to shake as he turns toward the sound.

A man is walking down the dock toward him. He's tall and handsome, but in a vaguely nondescript way, like if Dean was asked to explain why he was handsome, he wouldn't be able to answer. His hair is buttery blond curls and his eyes are blue.

He pauses next to Dean when he reaches the end of the dock. “May I join you?” he asks quietly. Dean can only nod.

The man sinks into a chair that matches Dean's, a chair Dean would swear wasn't there a second before. He looks out over the water, where the sun is just starting to set, sending golden rays dazzling across the calm surface of the water.

They sit together in silence for a few minutes. Dean's tongue is heavy with questions, but he can't bring himself to voice any of them. Idly, he wishes he had a beer. When he hears a rustle and looks to his right, there's a bucket filled with ice, frosted bottles nestled in it. He pauses for a second before reaching out and snagging one, popping it open with his ring. He offers it to the stranger with an inquiring tilt of his head, but the man smiles and shakes his own head. Dean shrugs mentally and lifts the bottle to his lips, letting the cold liquid slip down his throat.

The silence is pervasive, but not awkward. Dean feels like he could sit here for hours, drinking his beer and watching the sun on the water. If the strangely familiar man next to him was Sam, it would be a perfect dream.

The man sighs. “Wouldn't it be, though?” he says. Dean swivels his head to stare at him. It's like he read Dean’s mind.

“Of course I did,” the man says. “Dean, surely you've realized what this is?”

Dean purses his lips. Of course he realizes. It's a dream, and a weird one. It reminds him of the dreams he would have when Cas first started coming around - startlingly vivid, but unreal at the same time, with odd details clear as day and everything else fuzzy and half-missing.

“That's right,” the stranger agrees, and Dean wishes he would stop reading his mind, then flushes when he realizes that the guy could clearly read that thought.

The man turns fully toward him and his face is one of the things that is crystal clear and focused. “It’s okay, Dean. I forgive you.”

He breathes a bit easier, although he doesn't know why he should give two fucks what this guy thinks, just that he knows he _does_. The corner of the man's mouth lifts in what's almost a smirk, but his face doesn't seem to be capable of something as disingenuous. “I appreciate that. Though I'd appreciate it more without the cursing.”

Dean twists his fingers in his lap, suddenly ashamed. He hears the man chuckle softly. “Don't worry, Dean. I know you. You don't surprise me.”

“Who are you?” Dean asks, his voice tremulous, and as soon as the words leave his mouth, he realizes that they're not really necessary. He knows this man too. He just can't reach for the name.

The man doesn't answer, just watches him steadily, waiting. The answer punches Dean in the gut.

“Michael.”

Michael rewards him with another smile. “Well done.”

There's an alarm going off at the back of Dean's mind, a klaxon sound telling him that he's in danger, that he's vulnerable here in this dream with no weapons, no backup. Sam may be asleep not five feet from him, but he won't be able to help.

But even as these thoughts tear through his head, Dean can't react. Instead, he just reaches for another beer, cracking the top off. He knows that he should be feeling a lot of things: fear, anger, some sort of self-preservation, but none of his instincts are kicking in. He wonders if that's the problem, if the fucking archangel sitting beside him is lulling him into a false sense of security before jumping his bones.

Michael arches a fair eyebrow. “You know that's not how it works, Dean. I need your consent. Even in a dream.”

Dean's voice quavers. “And if - if I don't give it?”

Michael shrugs, the gesture unspeakably elegant. “Then you don't give it. I'm not here to take you, Dean.” He looks back out across the water. “I'm just here to talk.”

Dean feels braver. He snorts derisively. “Yeah, well, you guys seem more like doers than talkers, from what I've seen. Not big on constructive conversation, are you? Or listening.”

Michael answers that question with one of his own. “You do know that my brother has already been talking to Sam, do you not?”

The words leave Dean cold. Lucifer talking to Sam? He knew it was a possibility. He didn't know it had already happened. “So what are you asshats doing about it then?” he demands, gesturing sharply around them. “Taking a vacation?”

Michael’s smile is indulgent, like a father listening to his smart-mouth child: a reaction Dean would never get from his own father. “Lucifer is talking to Sam,” he repeats, maddeningly calm. “And so I am talking to you.”

Dean scowls. “So when you _should_ be doing, instead you're talking, that's fantastic. Well, we've heard all the talk, me and Sam. We've said no to Castiel and that dick Uriel and that even bigger dick Gabriel and that gigantic dick Zachariah. We're not interested in understudying your little title match.”

“You aren't the understudies,” Michael says. “You're the stars. But that's not the point.”

“No, you're right. It's not,” Dean snaps. “You all seem incapable of grasping the point. We're saying no. We've said no. We will keep saying no, forever. We will never agree. Ever.” Angry now, Dean gets up from the chair and hurls his empty bottle out over the lake. It hurtles toward the water - then disappears without so much as a splash.

Dean lowers his arm, feeling cheated and rather like a child throwing a tantrum while his disinterested parent looks on. He flops back into the chair.

“I can give you what you want, Dean.”

He looks up at that, meeting those fathomless blue eyes, young and impossibly ancient all at once. “How do you know what I want?”

Michael chuckles irritatingly. “How could I not? I _am_ you, Dean. You're my vessel. I know everything about you, even those things you don't know yet yourself.”

“Bully for you,” Dean says snidely, ignoring the voice in his head that's urgently suggesting he show more respect to this ageless being who could smite him without so much as blinking. “I've already seen what you guys think I want. Beer and burgers and girls. Well, thanks, but I ain't that cheap.”

“I can give you Sam.”

Dean blinks. That was not what he was expecting. “Newsflash: I already have Sam.”

There's a look on Michael’s face that is almost pitying. “But not the way you want him. Not wholly.”

Dean's heart plummets to somewhere near his toes. There's no use in denying anything to a fucking angel of the Lord, who can not only read every impure, lustful, wrong feeling he's ever had for Sam, but probably even ones he hasn't had yet.

The silence that falls is oppressive, crushing him under its weight. Michael says nothing, just observes him like a particularly interesting zoo exhibit. Which, he supposes, he kinda is.

The archangel breaks the silence first, somewhat surprisingly. “You don't deny it.”

Dean shrugs, mutinous. “Don't see much point,” he says, looking at his feet like a chastised child. Michael makes an affirmative noise. “Quite right,” he agrees. “Still, you are ashamed.”

Something in his voice makes Dean look up. That perfect face is blank, expressionless. “Well, yeah. Not exactly somethin’ to be proud of, is it? Lusting after my little brother’s gotta be high on the list of bad shit I've done. And it's a long list.”

Michael waits a minute before replying. “Dean, why do you think it is that you desire your brother?”

That wasn't the question Dean was expecting, and he doesn't really know how to answer it. “How the hell would I know?” he demands. “Probably because I'm a sick fuck. Because there's something wrong with me.”

It hurts, saying all these things out loud, even if it's all really just inside his fucked-up head. But the words are spilling out of his mouth and he's powerless to stop them. “Because Sam is...Sam. He's everything I'm not. He's smart and kind and he cares about everyone and he only ever wants to do what he thinks is right.”

He looks back at his feet, talking down into his lap. “Because I've loved him for so long that I don't know anything else anymore. Because somewhere along the road, it changed from loving him as a brother to loving him as something more. Because he was put in my arms and made my responsibility and he wriggled into my heart and made it his.”

He locks eyes with Michael. “Because he's _mine_.”

He's never given all the reasons like this, never laid them out bare, cold hard facts to be examined and catalogued. There's a weird tension in his chest and he feels like he should feel lighter, unburdened, but he doesn't.

To his chagrin, Michael just gives that enigmatic smile. “Exactly. And after all that, how do you think you've come to feel all those things, even when you know in your heart that you should not?”

“Jesus, I don't know!” Dean is pissed again. He doesn't want to be playing psychologist with the guy who plans on wearing him to the Apocalypse. He mildly regrets bringing Jesus into it, in case Michael is offended, but it's hard for him to care very much.

“It's very simple, Dean,” Michael says calmly. “You feel the way you do about Sam because I feel the same way about Lucifer.”

This bombshell shocks Dean into silence. He has literally no idea how to respond to such a statement. Luckily, Michael continues.

“You and Sam are mirror images of us in almost every way. There are a few differences, obviously. But at the core, we are the same. You love Sam because I love Lucifer. In more than merely a brotherly way.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” Dean says slowly, “that God and the archangels are all aboard the incest train?”

A vaguely pained expression briefly flits across Michael’s face. “I wouldn't phrase it quite like that,” he replies, somewhat stilted.

“I sure as hell would,” Dean shoots back. “What the actual fuck? I thought incest was like, way high on the Bible's no-no list.”

“Not entirely,” Michael says. “The things in the Bible are highly...edited. Revised, if you will. It is not much more than a story at this point - or a legend, rather. Something that has truth at its core, but has been so altered over time that it is quite a different thing. Think back on the Old Testament. Many of Adam's sons laid with sisters and daughters. They had little in the way of options.”

Reeling at these revelations, Dean is thinking out loud. “Yeah, I guess there weren't too many people around at that time.” He makes a face. “Okay, incest aside, this is - what about the whole homosexuality thing? I can get looking the other way for brothers and sisters ‘cause you gotta keep the population growing. But brothers? There’s no - what's that phrase Sam used once...no ‘biological imperative’. That's - it's freakin’ sodomy. Or whatever.”

Michael is looking increasingly like this conversation is not going the way he wanted. But if he wants to wear Dean like a cheap suit, the least he can do is answer some damn questions.

“Again, things have become somewhat lost in translation, and again, it has to do with population demands. Religious leaders wanted to discourage any behaviours that did not help to grow their flock. You're correct in that there is no biological imperative in two men engaging in sexual activity. Thus, it was made into something sinful. Something unnatural. Something wrong.”

Dean’s head hurts. “So you’re saying that God isn’t really against incest or people being gay.”

Michael sighs. “For argument’s sake, let’s say yes.”

Dean snorts. “Well, he’s got a whole bunch of people down here thinking quite the opposite. And killing other people because of it. For _centuries_.”

“Dean, we are not here to discuss the failing of Man to interpret the teachings of my Father. We are here to discuss Lucifer and myself, Sam and you.” Michael is definitely annoyed now. Dean has that effect on people. And angels, apparently.

The archangel continues. “The fact remains, Dean, that you desire Sam because you are soulmates. You already know this: you share a Heaven.” His eyes pierce into Dean. “But you are soulmates because Lucifer and I are soulmates. Our Father created he and I for each other, as two halves of the same whole. He intended each of us to belong to the other. Your feelings for Sam are an echo of that.”

He leans in close, drawing Dean like a magnet. “The only difference is that you and Sam have repressed those feelings, buried them away, pretended that they do not exist. You are beaten down by upbringing, by the rules and laws of human society, by your pre-installed notions of what is right and what is wrong. All this is irrelevant. Your love for each other is not something to be ashamed of. It is true and natural and crafted by God Himself. You should not deny one another of it.”

Dean’s head is spinning. He can’t reconcile what Michael is telling him with the years of feeling sick and awful and completely fucked up over his feelings toward Sam. The self-loathing is ingrained in him, a part of who he is. It’s practically in his online dating bio: _Dean Winchester, 31, loves hunting, his '67 Impala, and beating himself up over his lust for his kid brother._

And what’s worse is that he can’t understand why any of it _matters_. So he and Sam won’t go to Hell for loving each other. Super. But it hadn’t stopped him from going to Hell when he sold his soul, or stopped Sam from dying in the first place, and it won’t stop Armageddon from barreling down the tracks toward them.

“You’re right, Dean," Michael says softly. "It won’t stop anything. Lucifer and I _will_ have you and your brother and we _will_ meet each other on the field. I _will_ destroy him, my brother, my soulmate, because it is foretold, and then there will be Paradise on Earth. Until then, take comfort in Sam. Love him freely, openly, as you were meant to. Enjoy each other. Revel in each other. You will regret it forever if you don’t, before it’s too late.”

_Before it’s too late._

Before Michael and Dean kill Lucifer and Sam, or they kill them instead. Before one pair of them is obliterated, along with half the freakin’ planet. Before they’re torn from each other forever.

Dean looks Michael dead in the face.

“No,” he says quietly. “Now get out of my head.”

He wakes in the dark, silent room in Benton, Illinois, Sam’s soft, even breathing like a siren’s call. He slips from his bed, stealing across the carpet to kneel beside where Sam lies sleeping, and draws a hesitant, tremulous hand over Sam’s stubbled jaw.

Sam stirs, hazel eyes fluttering open. “Mmm...Dean? Whassa matter?”

“Nothing,” Dean says softly. He leaves his hand where it is, cupping Sam’s face tenderly. Sam, still mostly asleep, turns his cheek into the touch and Dean’s heart kicks up. “Wha’s going on?” Sam murmurs, shaking himself a little, more alert now.

Dean doesn’t answer. Instead, he leans in, letting his lips brush fleetingly against Sam’s. When he pulls back, Sam’s eyes are huge. “Dean?” he asks quietly, a thousand questions trembling in his voice. Dean nods, wanting to answer every single one. “Yeah, Sam.”

Sam surges up, crashing their lips together. Dean feels like he has come home.

Later - much later - when they lie, sated and happy, in a tangled embrace, Dean thinks that this has nothing to do with what Michael said, that he isn’t taking Michael’s advice to love Sam while he’s got the chance. Instead, he thinks that he’s making up for lost years. He’s getting them a head start on their future - however short that might be. They’ve wasted enough time.

If Dean has to face the Apocalypse, he will face it from the warm clutch of his brother’s arms.


End file.
